Elon Musk sells $5B of Tesla stock

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk unloaded $5 billion of stock in the electric car-maker, shortly after holding a poll on Twitter over whether he should sell 10% of his massive stake in the company, reported from Bloomberg.

The world’s richest person so far has disposed of more than 4.5 million shares this week, according to regulatory filings on November 10 - his first sales in more than five years.

On November 8, he offloaded about $1.1 billion worth of stock to pay income taxes on equity options that he also exercised that day, two of the filings showed. Those transactions were made based on a pre-arranged trading plan adopted in mid-September.

On November 9 and 10, Musk carried out the remaining sales. The filings detailing those disposals didn’t indicate that they were pre-planned.

The documents shed no light on whether Musk’s weekend Twitter poll had any bearing on his decision to carry out some or all of the transactions - or whether he’ll continue selling until he’s met the 10% threshold. To get there, he’d have to get rid of roughly 17 million shares, and even more if he also includes exercisable options in his total holdings.

In his announcement of the November 6 poll, Musk wrote that "much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.” Almost 58% of the 3.5 million votes were cast in favor of a sale.

Musk, 50, is the world’s richest person with an almost $300 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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